There was something wrong with Leo. Addie knew her 53 year old husband very well and was puzzled by some of his new behaviors. Beginning with the strange things he was seeing from their New York apartment window, Leo started to forget things and to express himself in unusual ways. As a whip smart professor and medical research specialist, he had already selected his doctors for their expertise, and began consultations. First was the opthamologist, next was a neurologist, then the neuropsychiatrist, then the CT scan and the MRI...nothing was wrong with him and all tests came back negative. Alzheimers was ruled out, as was everything else. But that didn't stop the strange behavior, and his university colleagues noticed. Since he was tenured they couldn't fire him, but they gave him medical leave plus his sabbatical at full salary for a year, then he would be forced to retire, but social security doesn't begin until he's 62. Addie is an artist whose medium is collage-how will she keep their apartment on her unreliable commissions?
As two years passed and no one would listen to her including her supposed friends, she was at the end of her rope-she called the suicide hotline. They referred her to a mental health consultant, who, after seeing all of Addie's documentation and quizzing her about Leo, gave a preliminary diagnosis of Lewey body dementia, which proved to be correct. She warned Addie that Leo's decline will be erratic and unpredictable, and that she should prepare to manage an appropriate place for him and to make sure all important papers are in order, including power of attorney, medical instructions and his will. She left her office relieved to finally know, but terrified that she finally knew.
As we follow Addie and Leo's path to the inevitable, we are given a window into a horrible neurological disease which can be worse for the caregiver than the patient. Kirshenbaum doesn't hold back in enumerating Addie's constant battles as she tries to find a suitable place for Leo to live, with a caring staff and a cheerful environment. When she finds the perfect personal aide, it is with relief that he will be well taken care of and a strange feeling of jealousy that Larisa knows what's better for Leo than she does.
The author made an interesting stylistic decision to put the narration of the novel in the second person, as if Addie is being told the story of what happened during those last years with her husband. Who is actually telling the story? Did Addie forget what happened? How long ago did it occur? Is Addie going through a mental crisis of her own? To me, the questions this brings up are another layer to the novel-much to digest here.
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